Ardor lightweight contracts for the gaming industry

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The gaming and iGaming industries have traditionally struggled with fragmented ecosystems and a lack of verifiable objectivity in randomly produced outcomes.

Gaming achievements and tokens on the Ardor platform can be configured to allow peer-to-peer trading for items in other games – allowing users to effectively migrate value from one game to the next. Furthermore, the platform’s new lightweight contracts address the issue of verifiable objectivity in a truly innovative way.

Traditional blockchain-based smart contract frameworks suffer from basic early development challenges which prevent them from becoming main stream platforms for game developers because:

Transaction fees, in the form of Gas, must be paid by the end user. But the end user often just wants to play and not deal with cryptocurrency exchanges or reporting taxes.

Contracts, being part of the blockchain consensus, cannot interface with external systems like a game engine since there is always a risk that different nodes connecting to a game engine at different times will receive different results causing the network to fork.

Similarly, random number generation and storing secret information is not supported or requires additional levels of complexity to achieve.

The new Ardor lightweight contracts framework introduces a fresh approach to blockchain-based contract development. Transaction fees can be sponsored by the game engine using “bundlers,” thus relieving the game end users from the burden of dealing with cryptocurrency. Tokens, which can be used for in-game economies, are built into the platform including singleton tokens, which can represent a unique item or achievement. Interfacing with external systems, like game engines, is enabled and even encouraged.

Also, random numbers can be generated in a reproducible method and secret information can be saved privately.

This extensive functionality is available out of the box while extensions, enhancements and external interfaces are relatively simple to code and deploy.

Supported use cases include in-game and inter game token economies. Using the Ardor platform, users can seamlessly trade their game achievements on a decentralized marketplace and transfer their in-game achievements between all games supporting the Ardor APIs.

Another support use case is trustless random data generation. Random data generated by contracts can be reproduced independently to make sure no bias is included in gambling games.

Moreover, game users can use the blockchain for messages, encrypted messages, trades, achievement recording, and other social interfaces all recorded in a transparent and auditable ledger.